Promotion content (e.g., advertisement) is normally delivered with other information content when the other information content is delivered to its target audience over the Internet. The promotion content could be displayed on a user interface according to different formats, e.g., in an embedded video playing window or as a static image banner. The promotion content is normally related to a specific service or product, and associated with a link to a separate webpage that is supported by a service or product provider of the specific service or product. When the target audience clicks on the link, the separate webpage is loaded, and information associated with the specific service or product is displayed to the target audience. In this promotion content delivery scenario, the information associated with the specific service or product would be delivered efficiently and reaches the target audience as intended, only when the promotion content and information of the separate webpage are associated with media content that is properly selected according to the target audience.
The promotion content is normally integrated on a webpage (e.g., Yahoo and Facebook) or a user interface of a software application, and displayed in a variety of formats. For example, a sequence of promotional messages are displayed sequentially on a blogging website (e.g., Sina Weibo) when a user of a client device accesses the blogging website customized for the user. The promotional messages are displayed as blog posts and merge with other posts created by the user of the client device. Then, such a promotional message sequence forms part of an information flow for the user, and could be used to deliver advertisement information to the user or his followers on the blogging website. In another example, some social media websites generate “News Feed” for their users by dynamically collecting information from the Internet. New messages in “News Feed” are chronically arranged, and are another example of the aforementioned promotion content.
A promotion content item is oftentimes delivered between two other media content items that are intended for a user of a client device. However, most media content items and the promotion content items are displayed as static items on the display of the client device. As shown in the above example, in the blogging website, every promotional message is statically displayed between the blog posts created by the user of the client device. Even if the media content items are video clips, the promotion content item (e.g., an advertisement message or clip) is only inserted and displayed between two video clips. In these circumstances, the promotion content item has been determined when the webpage was first loaded, and would not be updated until another webpage refresh request is made by the client device. Although the amount of information contained in the promotion content item is relatively limited, it requires a large real estate on the user interface for displaying the promotion content item, and thereby, compromises a delivery rate of the promotion content item (i.e., the amount of information that is displayed on a user interface and delivered to the target audience within a predetermined time duration).
In the above static promotion content delivery scenario, the delivery rate of the promotion content item would be raised, when a larger physical area on the user interface is used to display the promotion content item. A larger display are of the client device or a scrollable user interface design could have to be applied to obtain a higher delivery rate for the delivery rate of the promotion content item, which inevitably compromises the client device's operational efficiency. It would be beneficial to have a more efficient promotion content presentation mechanism than the current practice.